“Oh, I do remember,” she said in a choking voice. “And I can see the two of us driving over to North Riverboro and selling soap to Mr. Adam Ladd; and lighting up the premium banquet lamp at the Simpson party; and laying the daisies round Jacky Winslow's mother when she was dead in the cabin; and trundling Jacky up and down the street in our old baby carriage!”
“And I remember you,” continued Rebecca, “being chased down the hill by Jacob Moody, when we were being Daughters of Zion and you had been chosen to convert him!”
“And I remember you, getting the flag back from Mr. Simpson; and how you looked when you spoke your verses at the flag-raising.”
“And have you forgotten the week I refused to speak to Abijah Flagg because he fished my turban with the porcupine quills out of the river when I hoped at last that I had lost it! Oh, Emma Jane, we had dear good times together in the little harbor.'”
“I always thought that was an elegant composition of yours—that farewell to the class,” said Emma Jane.
“The strong tide bears us on, out of the little harbor of childhood into the unknown seas,” recalled Rebecca. “It is bearing you almost out of my sight, Emmy, these last days, when you put on a new dress in the afternoon and look out of the window instead of coming across the street. Abijah Flagg never used to be in the little harbor with the rest of us; when did he first sail in, Emmy?”
Emma Jane grew a deeper pink and her button-hole of a mouth quivered with delicious excitement.
“It was last year at the seminary, when he wrote me his first Latin letter from Limerick Academy,” she said in a half whisper.
“I remember,” laughed Rebecca. “You suddenly began the study of the dead languages, and the Latin dictionary took the place of the crochet needle in your affections. It was cruel of you never to show me that letter, Emmy!”
“I know every word of it by heart,” said the blushing Emma Jane, “and I think I really ought to say it to you, because it's the only way you will ever know how perfectly elegant Abijah is. Look the other way, Rebecca. Shall I have to translate it for you, do you think, because it seems to me I could not bear to do that!”